Butler's Center for Citizenship and Community Turns 20

PUBLISHED ON Nov 07 2016

Butler’s Center for Citizenship and Community (CCC) celebrates its 20th anniversary on November 30 at 4:00 PM in Jordan Hall 109, and among the achievements the CCC will be reflecting on is the widespread impact it’s had on the city of Indianapolis, the University, and, especially, Butler students.

The CCC is responsible for creating the Indianapolis Community Requirement (ICR), which requires students to take one course in any part of the University that involves active engagement with the Indianapolis community. In 2015-2016, Butler students gave more than 25,000 hours of time, which translates to about $600,000 in value.

“I'm not sure money captures the reciprocal learning value of the ICR, though,” said Donald Braid, who has been the CCC Director since 2007. “The work students do in ICR classes has helped address needs in Indianapolis communities, and it helps the students understand their own role in the community.”

In addition, Braid said, thanks to the ICR, “community engagement is woven into the fabric of the institution. All students participate, so that embeds in our core curriculum the civic goals that are part of a liberal education and Butler’s founding principles.”

Beyond the ICR, the CCC also has helped facilitate projects that involve campus-community partnerships. This year, for example, the center is helping lead a major research project, “Music First,” which will use music to attempt to ease the suffering of Alzheimer’s patients. It also has supported Education Professor Katie Brooks, who secured a $2 million grant to alleviate the shortage of English as a New Language teachers. And the center has sponsored educational programs like leading a campus-wide discussion on civil discourse.

But Braid said the most significant impact the CCC has had may be on individual students who have gone into the community thinking they were simply doing volunteer work and instead found that they were learning about themselves and getting back even more than they were giving.

When Kate Richards ’18 came to Butler from Effingham, Illinois, she knew a little about the ICR and Butler’s focus on service learning. But the idea of communicating with the Indianapolis community was something that appealed to her.

During her first American Sign Language class, she did her service learning at Miller’s Merry Manor, a nursing home and rehabilitation center, where she and another student played cards and talked with three or four deaf residents using sign language. In her third ASL class, she was assigned to the Indiana School for the Deaf, where she tutored middle-school students in math.

Richards, a Communication Sciences and Disorders major, has now completed four ICR courses and works for the CCC as a liaison between the Deaf School and students at Butler. In that role, she places students where they’ll have the best experience.

“Students know about the ICR,” she said. “But they don’t realize how much of an experience it is. I think that’s what the CCC is trying to get at—it’s much more than everyone thinks it’s going to be.”

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The CCC began through a grant from Eli Lilly & Co. in 1996 with Political Science Professor Margaret Brabant as its first director. The center’s creation was an outgrowth of Butler’s role as a founding member of Indiana Campus Compact, an organization of Indiana universities that got together to recognize the value of civic engagement and the responsibility of universities to make connections with their communities.

Early on, Brabant pursued Community Outreach Partnerships Centers grants from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The grants help colleges and universities apply their human, intellectual, and institutional resources to the challenge of revitalizing distressed communities.

Those grants, along with funding from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust and other local foundations, launched the CCC, which initially focused on service learning, community revitalization, fair-housing, and crime and safety issues.

“A lot of that work was valuable, and some portions didn’t fit Butler’s mission,” Braid said. “Over the years, we’ve learned which pieces really fit the university’s educational mission, which partnerships really are valuable reciprocally in supporting the education of our students and in supporting community issues, and we’ve focused on those things.”

The Indianapolis Community Requirement is one of those pieces that stayed. The CCC set up partnerships with community organizations, many of which continue to this day. The relationship with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI) is one.

Luke Schaible ’17, an Accounting major from Findlay, Ohio, began his service learning experience at ISBVI when he was a first-year student in Braid’s Making a Difference in the World course.

“I was pretty new to the whole concept of service and I had no idea what to expect,” he said. “I thought it was something you did for a requirement in college because you had to, and I didn’t know what I was going to gain. But talking to the students there really changed my view.”

When he first got there, he sat in a corner—“just being my shy self”—when a student came up and asked him to play basketball.

“It’s nice to go into their world for a few hours and see how ISBVI students are with their peers,” said Schaible, who now works for the CCC, guiding students to ISBVI to make sure they have the kind of experience he had. “You see that ISBVI students are just like you and me. That’s what’s so intriguing.”

Braid said the experiences Richards and Schaible have had are exactly what makes the CCC important to Butler.

“We’re interested in empathy, community, and service, which are what we think are an essential part of an education, and with students coming through a liberal arts university, we hope to generate an understanding and a practice of those kinds of values and virtues,” he said.

“The kind of educational process we promote is experiential on one hand, which is more than just doing in the community; it’s learning to value the community, it’s learning to understand others, to understand and appreciate diversity. In a way, this could be seen as an experiential education for the liberal arts. Anything that falls within that domain are things the center is interested in supporting.”

Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822

Butler's Center for Citizenship and Community Turns 20

Among the achievements the CCC will be reflecting on is the widespread impact it’s had on the city of Indianapolis, the University, and, especially, Butler students.

Butler to Begin Composting Dining Hall Food Waste

Butler University will begin a yearlong program to compost food waste from its dining halls on Tuesdays and Fridays, beginning April 14.

The University has hired the local composting service Green With Indy, which will pick up all compostable waste and bring it to GreenCycle of Indiana, where it will be turned into natural fertilizer.

“It’s a really big deal that we’re composting,” Butler Sustainability Coordinator McKenzie Beverage said. “Not many universities do it. It’s a relatively new thing, and it’s hard to overcome some of the barriers—like funding. We’re lucky because we have these two organizations in town that make it easy for us.”

Students will not have to separate their trash—or do anything different, really. On those two days, the trash cans will be replaced with composting bins.

Students from Beverage’s Sustainability Practicum class will be in the dining areas to provide information about the new program.

According to Greg Walton of Green With Indy, composting has a number of benefits:

-Food waste will be converted to a fertilizer that can used to create healthier, local food sources.

-Pesticides, herbicides and lead in our soil have been linked to developmental issues in children. Composting inactivates these harmful elements.

The Student Government Association’s Council on Presidential Affairs funded the lion’s share of the one-year contract. Lambda Chi Alpha, which was awarded an SGA grant, also donated to the costs, and a Staff Training and Enrichment Program mini-grant series helped with start-up costs.

During an audit of Butler’s trash in April 2014, Beverage found 600 pounds each of trash, food waste, and recyclables thrown away on just one day. (She plans to conduct another waste audit on April 16 from noon to 2:00 p.m. near Norris Plaza.

For the past year, she has challenged her Sustainability Practicum class to come up with ways for Butler to reduce food waste.

Among the ideas now being put into action:

Getting students to take a food waste pledge, which includes easy-to-do things like making a grocery list so they don’t overbuy and end throwing food away, and eating leftovers first before they make something new.

Offering home composting kits to some faculty and staff, including worms to eat through the food waste.

Creation of a Butler chapter of the Food Recovery Network—the second in Indiana, which collects prepared food that wasn’t eaten and donates it to a shelter.

Volunteering at the IUPUI Campus Kitchen, where they cook donated food and bring it to shelters.

“My experience with Food Recovery Network has been so rewarding because it has such a powerful mission,” said Lauren Wathen, one of the founding Food Recovery Network chapter members. “Not only does it reduce waste, but also it provides resources for those who need them, and I think that is invaluable.”

Bulldogs Beat the Rain to Give Back to the Community

First-year student Nick Bantz braved the weather on Saturday morning to give his time to the Indianapolis community as part of Bulldogs Into the Streets, Butler’s annual day of service.

Bantz and his fellow volunteers were assigned to the MLK Community Center just a few minutes from campus. The center serves youth, families, and seniors in the neighboring community by providing a variety of programming, including homework assistance, leadership development, grief counseling, and job training. The volunteers were busy organizing donated winter coats, painting walls, decorating windows, and taking down a broken book shelf.

Bantz, a chemistry and pre-med major from Muncie, Indiana, wanted to participate in BITS after learning more about Indianapolis during another program he was a part of during Welcome Week.

“I participated in the Ambassadors of Change pre-orientation program and I learned about all of the social issues in the Indianapolis community,” he said. “It really inspired me to give back. I also got to meet a lot of new people.”

Last year was the first time that the program was open to all volunteers, including new and returning students, faculty, staff, alumni, and members of the Butler community. The numbers are already growing from last year, with over 1,200 volunteers giving their time to 50 sites around Indianapolis and the surrounding areas.

Brighid Smith is the Public Relations Director for BITS this year. She has seen the benefits of expanding the program firsthand through her past experience as a volunteer.

“Ever since last year we opened it up to everyone instead of just first-year students and I think it has been a really good opportunity to get to know the Indianapolis community and for first-year students to interact with upperclassmen,” she said. “It’s a really nice conclusion to Welcome Week.”

Although a few outdoor activities were canceled due to heavy rain, there was plenty of work to do indoors all around the city. Some groups were busy painting and cutting cardboard for animals at the Indianapolis Zoo. Other groups went to the Ronald McDonald House to help clean and organize their storage space. One group stayed on campus and packaged around 20,000 servings of food for the Million Meal Movement.

Smith said she has enjoyed her participation in BITS both as a volunteer and a leader. She believes it is a great way for first-year students to get involved on campus and in the community.

“Even if you wake up in the morning and it’s not the first thing you want to do, it’s so rewarding,” she said. “I think it’s a great experience for first-year students because it teaches them responsibility and the importance of giving back.”

Schwitzer is Gone. Long Live Schwitzer.

BY Todd Leone

PUBLISHED ON Aug 01 2017

Schwitzer Residence Hall came to life in 1956 and for 60 years was called "home" to many Butler alumni and current students. Demolition of Schwitzer Hall was completed March 1, 2017, and construction of the new residence hall is currently underway. Although Schwitzer Hall has been removed physically, its ashes will be spread throughout campus and it will continue to serve a relevant purpose throughout the Butler University grounds.In the early stages of construction, bed frames, mattresses, chairs, and desks were removed from Schwitzer and donated to Goodwill. Existing doors, hardware, and equipment were also removed. These will aid in repairs for other Residence Halls throughout campus. The original stone entryway arches and sections of the building facade were removed and preserved. These parts will be incorporated elsewhere on campus. Thus, beloved Schwitzer Hall will continue to live beyond its useful life.

As Schwitzer's walls and floors were taken down, its remains began to fill the site of 750 West Hampton Drive.

As part of the LEED building process, all existing brick, concrete, and stone will be recycled onsite and used as backfill for the new residence hall. The bones of Schwitzer will continue to serve a purpose as the foundation for the new facility.

Shiel Sexton Company is General Contractor for the new $30 million residence hall, which is being developed by American Campus Communities. This is the second phase in the new frontier of modern student housing, a continuance of Fairview House. The new student housing will contain 660 beds in apartment-style units, a fitness center, study lounges, game rooms, a large community meeting space, and much more.

In the end, this traditional residence hall gives way to a modern facility, but the ashes of Schwitzer Hall will lay the foundation for a new place that will soon be called "home" to many at Butler University.